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Following on from a new translation of the Mass in English, Vatican Insider reports the Congregation for Divine Worship will establish a new team to regulate church architecture and promote singing in the liturgy.
The team will be tasked to put a stop to garage-style churches and boldly shaped structures and, it is reported, will have the judicial powers of the Congregation for Divine Worship to act.
There is a view in the Vatican that in recent decades, churches have been substituted by buildings that resemble multi purpose halls. Too often, architects, even the more famous ones, do not use the Catholic liturgy as a starting point and thus end up producing avant-garde constructions that look like anything but a church.
The announcement comes just days after the US Diocese of Orange purchased the Crystal Cathedral.
The team will also be responsible for the further study of music and singing that accompany the celebration of Mass.
Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, and Benedict XVI, consider this work as “very urgent”.
In his motu proprio, Pope Benedict explained he wanted the Congregation for Divine Worship and the discipline of the sacraments to be mainly devoted to giving fresh impetus to the promotion of the Church’s sacred liturgy, according to the renewal required by the Second Vatican Council since the establishment of the Sacrosanctum Concilium.
The dicastery must therefore devote itself to “giving fresh impulse” to the promotion of the liturgy, giving it the focus insisted upon by Benedict XVI, including and above all by showing an example.
The year 2012 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and the year after that will mark the 50th anniversary of the first approved conciliar text, the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium on the sacred liturgy.
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